The Extra is a Hero?-Chapter 262: ROYAL BATTLE [ 1]
Chapter 257: Royal Battle [ 1]
The Royal Box was a study in suffocating opulence. While the fifty thousand spectators below screamed and cheered, the air in the VIP section was thick with political tension, expensive cologne, and the weight of ancient bloodlines.
Seated in the front row were the titans of the human and demi-human world.
Denish William, Patriarch of the William family, sat with his legs crossed, swirling a glass of amber liquid. He looked bored. He hadn’t clapped once, not even when his son, Eric, had won his match earlier. To him, victory was the minimum requirement, not an achievement.
To his right sat Deiman Frostheart, the Lord of the North. He was as cold as his name suggested, his eyes scanning the arena with the precision of a hawk hunting mice. He was here to evaluate the investment that was Michael Wilson.
And to his left, radiating a calm but terrifying pressure, was King Elandor of Denmard—the Elven Sovereign and father of Selena Veylan.
"The structure of the competition has changed," King Elandor noted, his voice melodious but sharp. "A siege scenario. Interesting."
"It favors the brute," Denish William scoffed, flicking a speck of dust from his silk cuff. "Civilized warfare is about duels. This... mud is beneath the dignity of the nobility."
"War does not care for your dignity, Denish," Deiman Frostheart rumbled. "And neither does that boy."
He pointed down.
On the massive holographic screens, the camera zoomed in on the commander of the Arcadia team.
Michael Wilson.
He didn’t look nervous. He didn’t look excited. He sat on a conjured throne of ice atop the central keep of the fortress, his chin resting on his hand, looking at the opposing army with the detached interest of an entomologist observing a termite mound.
The caption under his name didn’t list his rank or class. It simply read:
[THE MONARCH]
The Stage
The arena had been terraformed beyond recognition. The gleaming adamantite floor was gone, replaced by a festering, humid marshland. In the center stood a fortress of grey stone, surrounded by a moat of thick, clinging sludge.
[Semifinals: Match 1]
[Arcadia Academy (Defenders)] VS [Sanctum of High Magi (Attackers)]
The horn blew.
The Sanctum team did exactly what Michael had predicted. They didn’t march. They didn’t wade into the mud.
"Levitate," commanded Velia Ancrose, the captain of Sanctum.
She was a breathtakingly beautiful woman with silver hair and robes that cost more than a small village. She looked at the mud with undisguised disgust.
Fifty mages rose into the air, hovering thirty meters above the swamp.
"Rain hell," Velia ordered.
The sky turned a myriad of colors. Fireballs, lightning spears, and hail began to bombard the fortress.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The explosions shook the shielding, but inside the fortress, it was calm.
"Angle shields to forty-five degrees," Michael’s voice cut through the noise, amplified by wind magic. "Let the mana slide off. Do not engage."
"They’re just sitting there!" Leon Lionheart shouted, pacing the ramparts. He deflected a stray fireball with his shield. "Michael, we can’t just tank this forever! Our mana reserves will run dry before theirs!"
"Patience, Leon," Arthur Pendragon said, standing by Michael’s side. Arthur was watching the sky, his hand on the hilt of his sword. "The Monarch hasn’t given the order."
Michael tapped his finger against the armrest of his ice throne. His eyes were glowing with a faint, blue luminescence—[Quantum Analysis] was active.
He saw the flow of mana in the air. He saw the intricate weaving of the Sanctum spells. They were disciplined, powerful, and arrogant.
"They aren’t coming down," Michael stated. "They believe themselves gods above the muck. Standard High Mage doctrine. If the enemy is dirty, burn them from a distance."
"It’s working, though," Eric William grunted, reinforcing a light barrier that was beginning to crack. "We’re pinned."
"Wait for it," Michael whispered.
The Rot
High above, Velia Ancrose frowned. The Arcadian turtle shell was tougher than expected. Michael’s ice barriers, layered beneath Eric’s light and Alex’s physical shields, were absorbing the thermal shock of the fire spells too efficiently.
"They think they can outlast us," Velia sneered. She reached into her robe and pulled out a small, jagged object wrapped in cloth.
It wasn’t a staff. It was a dried, blackened heart—an artifact provided to her by a ’benefactor’ the night before.
Use this if the walls prove stubborn, the hooded man had said. It is merely an accelerator for earth magic.
Velia didn’t care about the specifics. She just wanted to crush the "Monarch" and prove that commoners, no matter how strong, bowed to the old ways of magic.
She channeled her mana into the artifact.
"Crumble," she whispered.
A sickening green light pulsed from her hand. It shot down like a lance, striking the main gate of the fortress.
It wasn’t an explosion.
Hiss.
The stone didn’t break. It rotted.
The grey granite turned black, then soft, then liquefied into a bubbling, noxious sludge. The spell spread like a cancer, eating through the physical reinforcements that should have been immune to magic.
"What is that?" Leon gasped, stepping back as the battlement near him dissolved into goo. "That’s not Earth Magic!"
Down in the VIP box, King Elandor stood up abruptly, his sharp Elven eyes narrowing.
"That mana signature..." the King whispered. "It reeks of decay. That is not a spell taught at the Sanctum."
"Clever," Denish William murmured, missing the danger entirely. "Bypassing durability by altering the state of matter. Ruthless."
"It’s cheating," Deiman Frostheart said coldly. "But the judges aren’t stopping it."
Indeed, the judges remained silent. To the untrained eye, it looked like a high-level acid spell.
The Order
Inside the fortress, panic began to set in.
"The west wall is melting!" screamed a support student. "My barrier isn’t stopping it! It’s eating the mana!"
"Structure integrity at 60%," Arthur reported, his voice tight. "Michael, if the walls fall, we’re sitting ducks for the bombardment."
Velia laughed from the sky. "Where is your strategy now, Monarch? Come out and kneel in the mud!"
Michael stood up from his throne.
He walked to the edge of the dissolving rampart. He looked at the green sludge eating away his fortress. He looked at Velia, floating smugly in the pristine air.
[Quantum Analysis] dissected the green light.
Organic decomposition accelerant. Demon-realm origin. High toxicity. Mana consumption rate: Voracious.
It was a dirty trick. A lethal one. If that sludge touched a student, they wouldn’t just be eliminated; they’d lose a limb.
"Michael!" Leon yelled. "We need to sally out! We have to fight them in the air!"
"No," Michael said.
"This isn’t honorable!" Leon argued, pointing at the rot. "They’re using forbidden magic! We have to—"
"Honor?" Michael turned to Leon. His eyes were cold, void of any warmth. "Honor is a luxury for the living, Leon. Right now, we are at war."
Michael looked at the layout of the battlefield. The enemy wouldn’t come down to the mud. They wanted to stay clean. They wanted to breathe the fresh air while Arcadia suffocated in the rot.
"Fine," Michael said, his voice carrying a terrifying finality. "If they want to rot the stone, let them rot the air."
He turned to the back of the group.
Sitting in the shadows, ignored by everyone, was a pale, thin boy with dark circles under his eyes. Gideon. A Necromancer class—a pariah usually, kept on the team only because of the diversity quota.
Gideon had been trembling, afraid to use his magic in front of the cameras.
Michael walked up to him.
"Gideon."
The boy flinched. "Y-Yes, Monarch?"
"Do you see that green sludge?" Michael pointed. "It’s rich in decay energy. It’s basically an all-you-can-eat buffet for someone with your affinity."
Gideon looked at the melting wall. "I... I can feel it. It’s gross. But strong."
"Can you weaponize it?" Michael asked.
"I... if I touch it, I can turn it into gas. But it’s poison. If I do that, the judges will—"
"The judges allowed them to melt my castle," Michael interrupted. "I am authorizing you to return the favor."
Michael turned to the rest of the team.
"Maria," he called out to the Frostheart heiress. "Prepare [Wind Step]. Not for movement. I want a cyclone. Inverted pressure."
"You want to blow the gas back at them?" Maria asked, understanding dawning in her eyes. "But they’re too high up."
Michael smiled. The air around him dropped in temperature. Frost began to creep across the melting stones, halting the rot in its tracks.
[Skill: Ice Domain - Absolute Zero Start]
"I’ll bring them down," Michael said. "Gideon, start cooking."
The Necromancer swallowed hard, then nodded. A dark, purple aura flared around his hands. He reached out and plunged his fingers into the bubbling green rot.
"R-Rise," Gideon stammered.
The green sludge stopped hissing. It began to boil. Thick, yellow-green fumes began to rise from the mud, smelling of sulfur and death.
Up in the sky, Velia stopped laughing. She wrinkled her nose.
"What is that smell?"
Below her, Michael Wilson looked up. He adjusted his glasses.
"Phase Two," Michael whispered. "Suffocation."
The "Monarch" raised his hand, and the battlefield held its breath. The mud was about to become a graveyard.
(To be Continued)
